Whenever health insurance companies face real political pressure they know it’s best to change the messenger. Their executives and spokespeople clam up and turn to paid surrogates who attack reformers in order to take the public’s eye off the ball: health industry price gouging.

With the heat turning up nationally for California single payer proposal Senate Bill 562 (Lara), which threatens to upend industry profiteering, the same paid attack dogs who came out against regulating skyrocketing health insurance premiums are back.

The first test for "Medicare for All" in California, the type of universal health care enjoyed by every other nation of similar economic means in the world, takes place Wednesday in the California Senate Health Committee.

The California Nurses Association has been at the forefront of every major change in health care in California over the last three decades – – be it HMO patients' rights or safe staffing levels for patients in California hospitals. Now the nurses see our health care future clearly again.

The Medical Board of California should soon have to answer for its failure to properly investigate accusations that a doctor's negligence harmed or killed a patient.

It would be unthinkable to decide the merits of a rape case without collecting evidence and interviewing both the victim and the accused. It is equally inconceivable that the Medical Board would close a complaint involving potentially life-threatening negligence after a medical expert gets only the doctor’s side of the story. Yet that appears to be the outcome of too many patient complaints to the Board.

You have to have the deepest respect for the women and men who serve our nation and put their lives on the line for Americans. That’s why it’s particularly galling when a Sacramento lobbyist profits by making money from drug companies under their name.